


Ghost Stories

by sallyamongpoison



Series: Thedas Wasteland AU [8]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Kidnapping, M/M, Part 1 of 3, Red Lyrium, Thedas Wasteland AU, multiple parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 08:59:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5918872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sallyamongpoison/pseuds/sallyamongpoison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which strange things start happening in Haven, which concern both Cullen and Dorian, and Varric arrives with some unsettling news.</p>
<p>This is the first part in a 3 part arc for a prompt, which will be revealed as the other parts are posted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Stories

There were stories. Every civilization had stories. Some of them were meant to keep children on the straight and narrow so they could be good and moralistic adults. Some were legends of heroes passed down so people could believe that there was good in the world. Some were things to pass an evening by a campfire. Some were cautionary to keep people from straying too far from home. **  
**

Those were the ones that were often the most unsettling.

_Big. Red. Angry._

_Underground._

_People in cages._

_Crystals in cages._

-

Cullen had heard the stories since he was a child. He’d known of the Blights, terrible times in history where supposed monsters from the Deep Roads came up to wreak havoc on the world. The Grey Wardens, which before the Fall had been a Millennia-old order bound to keep the Blight at bay then turned an alternate military force, had been the ones to fight them. They had heroes and villains like every other group, and while it had always been the Templars that Cullen had idolized he’d forever heard the stories of Darkspawn and their ilk.

There were always monsters in the dark, after all, and not all of them carried guns.

“Commander?”

Cullen looked up from where he was looking over the watch schedules and cocked an eyebrow at the girl who stood in front of his desk. Marilyn. She worked in the kitchens. She looked scared.

“Yes. Marilyn, right?”

“Yes, ser,” she answered with a nod before she looked down at her hands, “I…I know you’re busy, but I’ve tried talking to some of the other watchmen, and they wouldn’t listen. I thought maybe you would, and-”

“It’s alright,” Cullen soothed and offered her an encouraging smile, “is something wrong?”

She nodded. “My sister,” Marilyn began, “she’s…she hasn’t come home. I haven’t seen her in two days. I talked to some of the watchmen and they said they’d look into it, but that was yesterday, and I don’t think she’d just not come back for this long.”

One eyebrow cocked and Cullen reached out to grab a piece of scrap paper and a pencil, “Does she stay with you?” he asked.

“In the dormitory by the kitchens,” Marilyn agreed with a nod, her auburn hair spilling over her shoulder, “she went out to the orchards in the afternoon and…” Large brown eyes went wet and red and she sniffled, “I’m scared she’s hurt.”

“I’ll make sure someone’s gone down to the orchards,” Cullen promised, “what was she wearing the last time you saw her?”

“Grey pants, blue shirt, black coat.”

“I’ll come find you the moment they get back from looking, okay? If no one finds anything then we’ll set up some people to search. Fair?”

“Thank you, Commander,” Marilyn answered with another nod before she wiped her eyes, “I’m just…I worry. She’s younger than me.”

He nodded, “I’ve a younger sister too,” Cullen told her, “and it’s important to worry. I’ll see to it someone goes immediately.”

–

Whispers around a campfire. People missing. It was something out of a story. Something big, something long forgotten, and something that should have served as a warning. In the last five weeks four more people had come up missing: scouts, militia, another runner. They’d all been doing their normal duties and then they were suddenly just…gone. Not gone with a note for ransom like usually happened when it was a raiding group or someone who thought they could get Haven’s inner circle to give them something, but just gone.

Slavers? Maybe. Those, however, stayed further away from large and well-defended settlements. It was eerie. Yes, it was only five people total out of hundreds that they had, but five was a lot more than they’d ever have just turn up missing. In a world like the one they all lived in, people didn’t just up and disappear. Not really. People were too tightly-knit for something like that.

“Perhaps the Venatori?” Cassandra offered from her seat around the long wooden table that served as their meeting ground for pretty much everything.

From Cullen’s left, Dorian shrugged, “Stealing people from Ferelden?” he asked, “to what end? They’re supremacists who want the Imperium to rise again and take over all of Thedas in the wake of the falling of the Veil. What would stealing cooks and runners do for them?”

“It was just a thought,” she pointed out, “how many other groups would snatch people from a settlement like this for no reason?”

“If they needed work horses, they’d get slaves from the Imperium,” Dorian answered, “or, at least, they’d take them from there. And it wouldn’t be like this. They’d want _something_.”

It was a concerning thing to have to talk about, really. Something in Cullen’s stomach always went a bit shaky whenever the topic of slavers and kidnapping started up. It made his blood run hot both with nerves and and anger that it happened at all. His sisters…Maker, if he hadn’t helped his sisters, then what might have happened? For there to be others in danger like that, people in Haven, it meant he wasn’t doing his job. he should have been doing something else, something _more_.

He and Dorian had left that meeting, walked beside each other, and just…didn’t talk. Not yet. They were all feeling the weight of it. All of the people who acted as heads of departments and those in charge of keeping people safe were concerned.Cullen felt it deep in his heart, those that had been taken, and he reached out to take Dorian’s hand in his just so he could feel the warmth of it where his own felt cold and clammy.

“We’ll figure it out,” Dorian told him softly, “we can talk to the other settlements and see if they’re losing people too. It might just be a coincidence.”

“Maker, I hope it is.”

Dorian squeezed Cullen’s hand, squeezed it tight, and he looked over so Cullen could see grey eyes from under full lashes that were full of concern. Cullen could feel his own hand trembling lightly, which was something that really only happened when it was something _that_ bad. Raiders and bandits he could handle, even the Venatori attacks on occasion, but the thought of people stealing their people was…Maker, it hurt him. It made him want to send a bird to his family to make sure they were all alright.

“Cullen,” Dorian prompted after a long moment, then squeezed his hand again, “we’ll figure it out, alright? It’ll be okay.”

“These are our _people_ ,” he answered with a slight shake to his voice. That shaking in his hands was starting to spread upward through his arms and into his chest. Cullen held Dorian’s hand tightly, pulled it to his chest and kept it there, and took a breath. “I want them to be safe,” Cullen went on, “all of them. Whatever the problem is.”

“I know,” Dorian replied, “you’re a good man.”

–

_“They came from underground.”_

_“I heard their eyes glowed red in the dark.”_

_“It would take ten people to put them down, and even then.”_

–

Nerves were often the thing that made rumors spread. They were all around Haven before Cullen could even get to the Chantry, and when he’d barged into the meeting with Leliana and Cassandra they both turned to look at him with wide eyes. They’d heard. In Leliana’s case, too, she’d probably been the source of some of them.

“Tell me. Now.”

They shared a look, and Cullen turned when he heard a telltale “ahem” from off to the right. Sitting in a chair was a dwarf wearing a long leather coat with his feet propped up on the corner of their meeting table. He held a metal cup in one hand and was smiling out from behind it. Tethras. Varric Fucking Tethras. No wonder the rumors were spreading like wildfire.

“Don’t look so surprised, Curly,” Varric prompted, “you always look surprised when I’m in town.”

“Only because you never come here with good news,” Cullen pointed out.

Cassandra stepped into Cullen’s line of sight, “There’s been some sightings,” she told him as she held out a battered piece of paper. Her hand was shaking. Cassandra’s hands never shook.

“Our people?”

Varric nodded just on the outside of Cullen’s periphery, “Your people. Our people in Kirkwall. People from everywhere. Except they’re not _people_.”

A brief glance down earned him a look at a crudely drawn picture. It was a cart pulled by horses as well as what looked to be like a few people chained and trailing behind. “What am I looking at?” Cullen asked.

“You were a Templar,” Varric pointed out as he slid his dirty boots off the table so he was sitting up straight, “and I know you read what was left from the old Order. All of you have to, don’t you? From Before?”

Cullen nodded.

“Good to know you’re with me, then,” Varric went on as he scrubbed a hand along his stubbled cheek and finished whatever was in his cup, “you, uh…ever heard of Red Lyrium?”

–

_“It sings. They sing. It calls to them and makes them like it.”_

_“The Evil Ones would use it. They…they used people.”_

_“They grew it from people!”_

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr! @sallyamongpoison


End file.
